PLAIN FARE.
"How much will you allow me a week if I will board myself?" inquired Benjamin of James. "It costs you now more than you need to pay." James was still boarding Benjamin in a family near by, being himself yet unmarried.
"Then you think I am paying more a week for your board than it is worth?" replied his brother.
"No more than you will be obliged to pay in any other family, but more than I shall ask you," answered Benjamin.
"Then you think of opening a boarding-house for the special accommodation of Benjamin Franklin?" which was treating his request rather lightly.
"I propose to board myself," said Benjamin. "I do not eat meat of any kind, as you know, so that I can do it very easily, and I will agree to do it, if you will pay me half the money weekly which you pay for my board."
"Agreed," replied James. "The bargain is made. When will you begin?"
"To-morrow," was Benjamin's laconic reply.
Benjamin had been reading a work on "vegetable diet," by one Tryon, and it was this which induced him to discard meat as an article of food. Mr. Tryon, in his work, gave directions for cooking vegetables, and such dishes as a vegetarian might use, so that the matter of boarding was made quite simple. Benjamin really thought that this mode of living was best for health and strength, though his chief object in proposing to board himself was to obtain money to purchase books. He had been trying a vegetable diet for some time in the family where he and his brother had boarded, and had often been both ridiculed and censured for his oddity. Perhaps he wanted to get away where he could eat as he pleased, with no one to say, "Why do ye so?" But most of all he wanted to command more money, that he might gratify his thirst for knowledge.
James was very willing to accept the proposition, as it would bring a little more money into his pocket. He was an avaricious and penurious young man, who thought mainly of making money in his business, and it was of little consequence to him whether he made it out of his brother or some one else.
"How much do you make by boarding yourself, Ben?" inquired James, some weeks after the experiment was commenced.
"I save just half of the money you pay me," answered Benjamin, "so that it costs me just one quarter as much as you paid for my board."
"You understand economy, I must confess," said his brother. "However, I have no fault to find if you are satisfied."
"The money I save is not the best part of it," continued Benjamin. "I save about a half-hour every noon for reading. After I have eaten my meal, I usually read as long as that before you return from dinner."
"Not a very sumptuous meal I reckon," said James dryly; "sawdust-pudding, perhaps, with cold-water sauce!"
"Nothing so difficult to procure as that," responded Benjamin. "A biscuit or a slice of bread, with a tart or a few raisins, and a glass of water, make a good dinner for me; and then my head is all the lighter for study."
"I should think you might have a light head with such living," added James, "and your body will be as light before many weeks I prophesy."
"I will risk it. I am on a study now that requires a clear head, and I am determined to master it."
"What is that?"
"It is Cocker's Arithmetic."
"Begin to wish you knew something about arithmetic by this time," added James sarcastically. "Making up for misspent time, I see!" Here was a fling at Benjamin's dislike of arithmetic when he was sent to school. We have seen that he accomplished nothing in figures, either at the public school or when he was under Mr. Brownwell's tuition. Liking some other studies better, he neglected this, and now, as is generally the case, he regretted his error, and applied himself to acquire that which he might have acquired before. It was a difficult task for him, but his patience and perseverance, together with his economy of time, and temperance in eating and drinking, enabled him to accomplish his object. Then he read a work on Navigation, and made himself particularly familiar with the geometry which it contained. "Locke on the Understanding," and "The Art of Thinking," were two other works that he read closely while he was living on a vegetable diet. All these works were difficult to be mastered by a boy not yet fourteen years of age. Yet he was not discouraged by this fact; it rather seemed to arouse him to greater efforts.
"You calculate time as closely as a miser does his money, Ben," said James.
"As little as I have for myself requires that I should calculate closely," was his reply. "Time is money to you, or else you would allow me a little more to myself; and it is more than money to me."
"How so?" inquired James.
"It enables me to acquire knowledge, which I cannot buy with money. Unless I was saving of my time, I should not be able to read or study at all, having to work so constantly."
Perhaps, at this time, Benjamin laid the foundation for that economy which distinguished him in later life, and about which he often wrote. Among his wise sayings touching this subject are the following:—
"If you would be wealthy, think of saving, as well as of getting."
"What maintains one vice would bring up two children."
"Many a little makes a mickle."
"A small leak will sink a ship."
"At a great pennyworth pause awhile."
"Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the kitchen fire."
"Always taking out of the meal-tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom."
"For age and want save while you may,—
No morning sun lasts a whole day."
"It is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel."
"A penny saved is a penny earned."
"A penny saved is twopence clear;
A pin a day is a groat a year."
"He that wastes idly a groat's worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day."
To a young tradesman he wrote, in the year 1748:—
"Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shilling a day by his labour, and goes abroad or sits idle one half that day, though he spend but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides....
"In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become rich,—if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavours, doth not, in his wise providence, otherwise determine."
In these excellent sayings, time and money are spoken of together, because time is money; and Franklin was never more economical of one than of the other. All that he says of frugality in respect to property applies equally to time, and vice versâ. In his boyhood, when he adopted a vegetable diet, he had no money to save, so that the most of his economy related to time. It being to him as valuable as gold, he was prompted to husband it as well. To some observers he might have appeared to be penurious, but those who knew him saw that he reduced another of his own maxims to practice: "We must save, that we may share." He never sought to save time or money that he might hoard the more of worldly goods to enjoy in a selfish way. He was ever generous and liberal, as we shall see hereafter. The superficial observer might suppose that a niggardly spirit prompted him to board himself,—that he adopted a vegetable diet for the sake of mere lucre. But nothing could be wider from the truth than such a view. We cannot discover the least desire to hoard the money he saved. He laid it out in books, and such things as aided him in self-improvement. He believed in temperate eating, as we have already said, and the following maxims of his show the same thing:—
"Who dainties love, shall beggars prove."
"Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them."
"Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries."
He saw that he could never possess the books he needed, or command the time, if his appetite for luxuries was gratified. In his circumstances, the most marked self-denial was necessary, to gain his object. At the same time, he believed it would make him more healthy to be abstemious. There was not an iota of stinginess in his habitual economy.
Economy of time or money is praiseworthy only when it is done to command the means of being useful,—which was true of Franklin. When it is practised to gratify a sordid love of money, it is ignoble and sinful.
About this time, Benjamin and John Collins had another interview,—differing somewhat from the one already described, as the following dialogue will show:—
"What book is this, Ben?" inquired John, taking up one from the table.
"It is an old English Grammar which I came across the other day," answered Benjamin. "It has two chapters, near the close, on Rhetoric and Logic, that are valuable."
"Valuable to you, perhaps, but not to me," said John. "What shall I ever want of Rhetoric or Logic?"
"Everybody ought to know something about them," answered Benjamin. "They have already helped me, in connection with the works of Shaftesbury, to understand some things about religion better. I have believed some doctrines just because my parents taught me so."
"Then you do not believe all that you have been taught about religion, if I understand you?"
"No, I am free to say that I do not. There is neither reason nor wisdom in portions of the creed of the Church."
"Why, Ben, you surprise me. You are getting to be quite infidel for a boy. It won't do for you to read Logic and Shaftesbury any more, if you are so easily upset by them."
"Made to understand better by them what is right and what is wrong," answered Benjamin. "The fact is, very few persons think for themselves. They are religious because they are so instructed. They embrace the religion of their parents without asking themselves what is true or false."
"There is not much danger that you will do that," said John. "Present appearances rather indicate that the religious opinions of your father will be blown sky-high,"—though John did not mean quite so much as his language denotes.
"You do not understand me. I respect my parents and their religious opinions, though I doubt some of the doctrines they have taught, and which I never carefully examined until recently."
"I must go," said John; "at another time, I will hear more;"—and he hurried away to his business, which was waiting for him.
Benjamin had read carefully the works of Collins and Shaftesbury, which were well suited to unsettle his religious belief. At the time of this interview, he was really a doubter, though not avowedly opposed to religion. The fact shows the necessity of using care in selecting books to be read, and the danger of tampering with those that speak lightly of the Gospel. Even a mind as strong as that of Benjamin was warped by the sophistries of such a book, and it was some years before he recovered wholly from the sad effects of such reading. His early religious culture, however, and his disposition and ability to perceive the truth, finally saved him from the abyss of infidelity, as will appear more evident in the pages that follow.